Meals in Amish Homes

ACM Tours can arrange for you and your group to enjoy a traditional Amish
style meal, right in an Amish home, out on the farm. This is often the
highlight of a visit to Illinois Amish Country.

Amish ladies are very familiar with cooking for large groups. They often
join together to cook for benefits, weddings, funerals, weekly church
services, and extended family gatherings numbering up into the hundreds.
Actually, with most Amish families having many children, as soon as
grandchildren arrive, the family gatherings can become quite large everyday.

Our Amish hosts prefer to seat groups of 10 or more and a group of this size
or larger can be scheduled on about any day except Sundays. Occasionally our
hosts will accept reservations for 6-8 adults and it is worth inquiring.
However if you are a smaller family group, it is still possible to
combine groups to satisfy these requirements. Let us know your dates of
interest and if we have a meal already scheduled we can add you to it.
If the date is still open, we can pencil you onto that date and try to
recruit another group to make the minimums. During the March 1 thru Dec
15 time frame and especially on Saturday requests we are 80% successful
and building groups, so it never hurts to ask. We'll contact you back
either way to keep you updated on your request.

For group meals, advance notice of 7 days is requested. Meal
plans can be changed (added to or reduced in number if your plans change) up
to 72 hours in advance of the meal date. However, give us a call if your
plans are quicker. We'll check with our hosts and see if we can't find one
with time to cook. Bear in mind that our Amish hosts use a message service
for our contacts and sometimes have to go over to a neighbors house to
return our calls, so it takes a minimum of at least 2-3 days to confirm any
meal plans. For smaller groups, we'll try to fit you in with another group.
If you're attending one of our special events here in Arthur, we might just
have some open seating available.

The filling, traditional meals are served family style, on traditional
benches and folding chairs, right in the host's kitchen, living room, and/or
dining room. Arthur Amish houses have large rooms, often with removable
walls to accommodate large gatherings. We can seat up to 110 people at one
serving in some of our homes. The meals offer two meats, one always fried
chicken, vegetable, mashed potatoes and gravy, noodles, homemade bread,
applebutter, "church" peanut butter, drinks and a choice of homemade pies.
You will not go away hungry!

Your host will appreciate a group or silent personal prayer
before the meal,
and she is always on hand and loves to chat after the meal. After the meal,
our hosts offer to take her guests on a tour of her farm, barns and etc and
discuss any questions you may have about her farm life. Usually there is
livestock, always horses, often colts and puppies to enjoy. Questions about
horse farming, horse and buggy travel and some questions about Amish customs
are often discussed.

Remember that in the summer, the Amish have no air conditioning or electric
fans. Occasionally on a hot summer day the meal area can be quite warm. A
summer meal in an Amish kitchen can remind us of our past and help us to
appreciate what we have back home. But, unless someone in your group has
serious health problems, don't be scared off by this paragraph. Out here in
the country, it is not that far back to when all of us enjoyed the
summer this way.

Meals can be arranged at any time, however most common are mid-day
dinners(noon to 1pm) and evening suppers 4-6pm. Whenever we schedule your
meal, you need to allow time to arrive in Arthur at least a half hour prior,
to get directions and then drive out to the country to the hosts home.